When I know that I had a good day at work, I like to kick back. For me, that usually means I'll sit in the backyard with the radio on, a craft beer in my hand, and some friends to keep me company.

North Korea's Glorious Leader Kim Jong Un, however, has a different idea of what it means to celebrate a job well done. Check out this video of his most recent fete, thrown after his country launched a rocket. It has everything a maniacal dictator could want: videos of rockets, giant sparklers, his wife, and hundreds of ancient generals clapping in unison to a live performance of Moranbong, a girl-band that the dear leader produces in his spare time.

January 14 started like any other day for Mos Def, the American Hip Hop artist and actor. He had been staying in South Africa for the last few years with his family and decided to take a trip abroad. Things went sideways when Def presented his credentials to South African immigration at the airport, though. The took one look at his passport, conferred with one another, and then detained the rapper for presenting false documents. As it turns out, Mos Def gave the South Africans a "world passport," thus intimating that he was not an American citizen but was, instead, a citizen of the world.

Def, who also goes by the name Yasiin Bey and was born Dante Terrell Smith Bey, was arrested at the gate and appeared in front of the Bellville Magistrate's Court two days later. There, the judge ordered Def and his family to leave South Africa within fourteen days and to take his family, who had been staying in the country without proper documentation, along with him. As far as I can tell, he and his family are still in country and intend to appeal the decision. Also rumored, but not verified, is Kanye West's involvement in the affair. According to ABC, Mos Def pleaded with multi-media icon and hip hop visionary Kanye West to take up his cause.

Even if Kanye stays out of this legal mess, the case itself is a curious one for a few reasons. First, Def's claim to be a world citizen is an outgrowth of his political activism. As a means to support what he sees as gross injustices against African-Americans, Def has consistently rejected the notion of American Exceptionalism. This alone is not novel-- Ta-Nehesi Coates is the latest in a long line of black artists, authors, academics, and activists to connect the two in his most recent book.

Perhaps more interesting is the claim that Def is a citizen of the world-- an intentional rejection of any national identity. I'd love to sit down with him and pick his brain on the issue. Indeed, I have many students and colleagues at SIS who call themselves such. Their backgrounds and rationales vary, which poses an interesting puzzle. But, I digress.

Def and a sample of SIS affiliates aren't the only people who think this way. The issuers of the "world passport" that Def presented to South African authorities agree, too. They work for the World Service Authority, an NGO located in Washington, DC whose mission is to support stateless people and anyone who considers themselves to be stateless. The WSA has been around since 1954 and played a minor role in world politics.

Garry Davis, a former Broadway star, denounced his US citizenship and declared himself a citizen of the world in 1953. He established the WSA as a means to help other like-minded people break free from the bonds of national identity. In the process, he created a small institution that would actually fill the void that the states of the international system could not fill. For example, when the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia broke apart at the end of the Cold War, a few unfortunate people living there were caught in the lurch. These stateless people had no other way to establish a national identity and turned to the WSA to provide travel documents.

Another weird story involves mail between the People's Republic of China and Taiwan in the 1980s. When the two countries (or one country and one breakaway region, as some might see it) couldn't agree on how to send mail from one to the other, the WSA stepped in. It printed "World Government Postal Stamps" in 1981 that were used to send mail across the Taiwan Strait.

Anywho, back to Mos Def. I wish him the best of luck. His music and acting are a treasure. His activism is controversial. His choice of travel documents is... gutsy. Perhaps I have too much to live for, or maybe I'm just afraid of ICE, but I don't plan on using any homemade passports the next time I'm at the airport.

DBM

Yes, one of the languages you see is Esperanto. Don't act like you're shocked, because you're not.